THIS WEEKEND
After a seemingly endless amount of anticipation, Star
Wars Episode I : The Phantom Menace finally
arrived at theaters over the weekend and left a Jabba-sized crater in its
wake. While not reaching the industry's lofty expectations, the George
Lucas-directed picture grossed an enormous $64.8M over the Friday-to-Sunday
frame and a mammoth $105.7M since debuting on Wednesday, May 19th, according
to final
studio figures. That figure is a full $3M better than the studio originally
expected on Sunday. Accounting for an incredible two-thirds of all ticket
sales for the top ten films in North America, Episode
I has become the fastest film to ever
reach $100M in domestic receipts (five full days) and set new opening-day
and single-day records with its $28.5M haul on Wednesday.

But the record that
many box office observers were certain would fall was the $72.1M in sales
that The Lost World generated
over the Friday-to-Sunday portion of its Memorial Day weekend holiday opening
in 1997. That milestone remained intact as the new Star
Wars prequel came in 10% below the ferocious
bite of the dinosequel. However, The Lost
World opened over a holiday time when
moviegoers had more available time to entertain themselves plus its Sunday
was followed by a day off so it played more like a Saturday when sales
are strong throughout the day and night. Plus The
Phantom Menace opened on a Wednesday thereby
pushing sales from die hard fans out of the weekend and into the earlier
midweek period. Also with all the hype in recent weeks on how the movie
would be sold out during its opening weekend, many casual fans of the film
may have stayed away to avoid the anticipated crowds. Furthermore, the
Spielberg sequel benefited from roughly 300 more theaters and 600 more
total screens than The Phantom Menace.

Invading a very wide
2,970 cinemas, with a total of around 5,500 screens, Episode
I averaged a stellar $21,822 per theater.
Other per-theater debut averages for notable films include $17,066 for
1997's Star Wars -
Special Edition, $19,465 for 1989's Batman,
$20,865 for 1993's Jurassic Park,
and $21,985 for the Friday-to-Sunday portion of The
Lost World's opening. On a per-theater
basis, The Phantom Menace
and The Lost World
debuted with about equal strength. The last installment in the Star
Wars saga, Return
of the Jedi, launched over the four-day
Memorial Day weekend in 1983 with a then-record $30.5M in 1,002 sites.
That translated into a gargantuan $30,430 average over the long weekend
and about $24,000 per theater during the Friday-to-Sunday part.

Episode I's
daily grosses thus far rank among the all-time highest. The $115M-budgeted
film now claims the largest Wednesday gross, third-best Thursday and Friday
numbers, and the second-highest Saturday and Sunday grosses ever. Wednesday's
opening tally of $28.5M (which included early midnight screenings) set
a new all-time single-day record eclipsing the old benchmark of $26.1M
set in 1997 by The Lost World's
opening weekend Sunday. Thursday's $12.3M trailed Independence
Day's $17.3M and Men
in Black's $14.2M. The
Phantom Menace's $18.5M Friday ranks behind
The Lost World's
$21.6M and Batman Forever's
$20M, while the Saturday and Sunday tallies of $24.4M and $21.9M stand
second behind The Lost World's
daily figures of $24.4M and $26.1M, respectively, from its premiere weekend.

Fox's final daily grosses
for the opening five-day weekend of Star
Wars Episode I are as follows : Wednesday
- $28,542,349; Thursday - $12,307,918; Friday - $18,467,513; Saturday -
$24,414,123; and Sunday - $21,929,334. The Friday-to-Sunday final weekend
gross came in at $64,810,970 while the complete five-day haul was $105,661,237.

The opening weekend
performance of Star Wars Episode I left
many in the industry wondering whether or not it was a disappointment.
Did the much-hyped extravaganza fail to reach the heights that it should
have? Or were analysts being foolishly overoptimistic making bloated predictions
that no film could ever achieve? Probably a little of both. Because Star
Wars films have always done major damage
to the cash registers, the standards were raised for this episode, the
first new story in 16 years. The Phantom
Menace had fans camped out for weeks in
order to buy tickets and 121 theaters were playing the movie 24 hours-a-day
this weekend so as to satisfy initial demand. These conditions caused some
to project huge grosses of $140M or more over the five-day period.

With the opening weekend
now history, midweek sales and the upcoming Memorial Day holiday frame
will give a much better indication of how Episode
I will play out over the long run. Fan
reaction has been mostly positive with Fox reporting that exit poll audiences
are giving the prequel high marks. But many of the more devoted Star
Wars fans have not approved of the acting,
character development, excessive use of special effects, and the digital
sidekick Jar Jar Binks who most find annoying. Critics have published mixed
reviews over the last few weeks but Phantom's
fate truly rests in the hands of the fans. If they enjoy the picture they
will come back for another show and recommend it to friends. If not, then
steady erosion awaits.

Competitors trying
to program around the force of Anakin Skywalker and company did not see
any promising results. Other action and special effects films saw declines
larger than in previous weeks. Female-skewing pictures like The
Love Letter, A
Midsummer Night's Dream, and even the
Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love
(which introduced a new "Make Love, Not War" ad campaign to combat
Star Wars
this weekend) attracted little traffic.

After a two-week reign
atop the charts, The Mummy
put on a gown and took the bridesmaid spot with $13.8M. Dropping 45%, the
Universal release was hit by incoming Phantom
Menace business but still managed to elevate
its 17-day cume to a robust $100.2M. The Brendan Fraser horror-adventure
climbed past the $100M mark on Sunday and should eventually reach about
$130M. The Mummy
became the fourth release of 1999 to join the blockbuster club after The
Matrix, Analyze
This, and Star
Wars Episode I.

Fox's continent-hopping
caper pic Entrapment
slid one notch to the bronze medal spot with $6.3M. The Sean Connery-Catherine
Zeta-Jones action movie was off 31% and saw its loot increase to $59.9M.
Entrapment
also tried to capture some of the Star
Wars spillover business and experienced
one of the lowest dropoffs in the top ten.

The Matrix
shot up a fourth place finish with $2.9M pushing its cume to a blockbuster
$149.5M. The Warner Bros. film's 37% decline was the largest in its two
month run at the box office.

DreamWorks tried counterprogramming
Star Wars
with the romance The Love Letter
starring Kate Capshaw, Tom Selleck, and Ellen Degeneres but saw only mild
interest from consumers. Collecting an estimated $2.7M from only 769 locations,
the film averaged $3,502 per theater and ranked fifth overall at the box
office. The studio's distribution president, Jim Tharp, noted that the
audience was about 70% female.

Falling 39% to sixth
place was the update of Shakespeare's A
Midsummer Night's Dream which grossed
$2.6M in its second try with moviegoers. With a mild $8.2M in ten days,
the romantic comedy aimed at mature women looking for an alternative to
Star Wars
did not take advantage of the boost in theatrical traffic this weekend
as its decline indicated not-so-strong interest from moviegoers. The Fox
Searchlight title, produced for about $14M, looks to conclude its run with
$13-15M.

Enjoying the lowest
depreciation in the top ten Fox's Never
Been Kissed smooched up $1.7M. Off 30%,
the Drew Barrymore high school tale was the only film in wide release that
specifically targeted younger females and in turn saw the least disruption
from the Phantom
footprint.

Tumbling 63% to eighth
place was the Jet Li action pic Black Mask
with $1.7M. Packing martial arts and science fiction, the Artisan release
of the 1996 Hong Kong film has grossed $7.3M in ten days and should reach
$9-10M before finding a wider audience on home video. Eddie Murphy's comedy
Life took
in $1.6M and reached a cume of $57.5M. Paramount's Election
rounded out the top ten with $1.5M giving it $9.2M in ticket sales from
voters.

October Films' Trippin'
and MGM's Tea With Mussolini
both fell out of the top ten over the weekend. Opening in limited release,
the documentary Trekkies,
about the lives of obsessed Star Trek fans, beamed up only $125,636 in
339 theaters. The Paramount Classics film averaged a horrendous $371 per
ship. Fine Line's Beseiged,
directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, averaged a good $4,425 in 36 locations
for a weekend gross of $159,289.

Compared to projections,
Star Wars Episode I
opened below my forecasts of $85M for the three-day and $130M for the five-day.

Read what fans from
around the world have said about the box office potential of Star
Wars : Episode I in Box Office Guru's
Phantom Menace Reader Forum which ran from
May 1-19.

Take this week's NEW
Reader Survey on Notting
Hill starring Julia Roberts. In last week's
survey, readers were asked which of five films had the most surprising
box office performance this year. Of 1,896 responses, 29% chose The
Matrix, 25% selected She's
All That, 20% said Analyze
This, 17% picked The
Mummy, and 8% voted for Life
is Beautiful.

The top ten films grossed
$99.5M which was up 5% from last year when Godzilla
opened at number one with $44M over the
Friday-to-Sunday portion of the Memorial Day weekend frame, and down 8%
from 1997 when The Lost World
smashed every record with a $72.1M launch over the similar portion of its
holiday weekend.

Be sure to check back
on Thursday for a complete summary, including projections, for the
Memorial Day holiday weekend when Star
Wars will battle Notting
Hill.

This column is updated three times each week
: Thursday (upcoming weekend's summary),
Sunday (post-weekend analysis with
estimates), and Monday night (actuals).
Source : EDI, Exhibitor Relations. Opinions expressed in this column are
those solely of the author.